Lost Along the Way(40)
A month later she’d driven herself to her appointment, despite the doctor’s insistence that she have someone with her to drive her home. How was she supposed to tell him that as a grown, married woman, she had no one who could escort her home when everything was over? She’d lain in a recovery room for a half hour, eating saltines and drinking orange juice in an effort to appease the nurses and reassure them that she was able to drive. Then she slinked back to her house with a super-plus maxi pad between her legs and a sheet of paper that detailed how she should take care of herself following the procedure. When she got home she made herself a cup of tea. She was sitting alone in her kitchen, trying to figure out how the young girl with the freckles and the tennis racket ended up a lonely, middle-aged woman who decided she shouldn’t have children, when Meg burst through her back door. It never occurred to her that Meg might see the letter from the doctor until it was too late.
Cara hoped that maybe Meg had stopped feeling so sorry for herself by now, and that she would be able to see Cara’s side of things. She had imagined them reconciling thousands of times, convincing herself that if they could just sit down and talk, everything would be okay. She’d been wrong. The years had done nothing to dull Meg’s misguided feelings that Cara had somehow intentionally hurt her, which was always Meg’s problem. Cara wasn’t going to let Meg play the martyr and continue to make her feel like she was a horrible person who had somehow taken her friendship for granted. She was over paying for things she never asked to have happen to her in the first place. She had paid more than enough.
Cara glanced at Jane and Meg still standing on the stoop and was struck by how different they now all were from each other. Back in high school they’d tried their hardest to look exactly alike. They’d had the same anoraks and the same sweaters from J.Crew. When they went to flea markets on the weekends they bought the same bracelets and enamel earrings and wore the same Dr. Martens to school and the same Nike sneakers during after-school sports. They had the same dancing bear bumper stickers on their cars and listened to the same CDs—Pearl Jam and Counting Crows and Tracy Chapman—as if having all of the same things would somehow bring them closer together. Those girls were long gone, and the women who replaced them didn’t seem to have anything in common. Cara decided it was time to admit that and let the past stay where it belonged.
She put the car into reverse, backed out of the driveway, and pulled away. She didn’t feel bad about leaving. Jane may have asked her to bring her here, but she never said anything about taking her home.
fifteen
Was she your ride back to Manhattan?” Meg asked. She stood next to Jane on the porch and happily watched Cara’s car turn right out of the driveway and speed off.
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But yeah, I guess so. Now what am I supposed to do?”
“If you still want a ride just go stand in the middle of the road. She’ll be back in one minute,” Meg said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she went the wrong way. The road dead-ends that way. She’s going to have to turn around and pass us again.” Before Jane could answer, they heard a car approaching and watched Cara speed by them again in the opposite direction. “That probably wasn’t the grand dramatic exit she’d been hoping for.”
“Get your keys. We’re going after her,” Jane ordered, pointing Meg back into the house.
“I most certainly am not. I have recipes to test, then I’m going to go out back and water my herb garden, which is exactly what I was planning on doing before you rang my doorbell and ruined my day.”
“Do you hear yourself? You just threw her off your doorstep and you don’t even know why we came to begin with. You’re too old to be acting like this, and honestly it’s not like you. You can be pissed all you want, but I’m going after her. You can either give me your keys with the knowledge that I live in Manhattan and haven’t driven a car in about eight years, or you can drive and take me with you. Either way, your car is leaving this driveway. Do you understand?”
Meg didn’t appreciate being bossed around in her own house, but there was something in Jane’s voice that made her reconsider her initial reaction. It wasn’t that Jane was being her typical bossy, brazen, obnoxious self, it was that she looked legitimately panicked. She was acting like Meg had just done something much worse than deny Cara entry into her home. If something bad happened to Cara after she made her leave without ever knowing why she was there to begin with, Meg would never forgive herself.
Meg spun on her heel, went directly into the kitchen, and removed the loaf of bread from the oven with the striped oven mitts she’d bought in town on Memorial Day weekend. Then she turned off the oven, grabbed her car keys from a rattan basket on the kitchen counter, walked past Jane, and climbed into the driver’s seat of her car.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” Meg said as she drove west down Montauk Highway. “You guys just show up on my doorstep and barge into my life, and now I’m chasing Cara down the highway why, exactly?”
“Because my phone died and I don’t have a better idea. Do you?” Jane answered.
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t understand why any of this is my problem. You don’t need her to get back to the city. I could’ve dropped you at the train station. We should just let her go,” Meg said, trying to sound completely detached, which was nearly impossible for her.